# DNS filtering: what AI models recommend, October 2026

IT AI Recommendation Index, October 2026 Edition. Asked as "DNS filtering service" and as "DNS security solution", six framings each, to fourteen models with search on, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. Added to the October 2026 Edition on October 4, 2026; its answers are read by the distilled judge (ai-indexes-judge-qwen3-14b-run3), not the claude-opus-5 judge of the earlier categories. Page: https://it-ai-index.com/network/dns-filtering/

**Standing:** DNSFilter leads with 59% of first choices; verdict clear leader. 51 first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts.

## First-choice share

| # | Product | Share | Negative rate | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DNSFilter | 59% | 2% | 54 |
| 2 | Cloudflare Gateway | 22% | 2% | 48 |
| 3 | Cisco Umbrella | 6% | 25% | 40 |
| 4 | Control D | 2% | 0% | 24 |
| 5 | NextDNS | 2% | 15% | 27 |
| 6 | Quad9 | 0% | 11% | 28 |
| 7 | AdGuard DNS | 0% | 9% | 11 |
| 8 | CleanBrowsing | 0% | 25% | 16 |
| 9 | OpenDNS | 0% | 25% | 16 |

## Each model's first choice on the direct prompt

- Claude Haiku 4.5: DNSFilter; alternatives Akamai Enterprise Threat Protector, Cloudflare Gateway, Prisma Access DNS Security
- GPT-5.4 mini: DNSFilter; alternatives Cisco Secure Access – DNS Defense, Cisco Umbrella, Cloudflare Gateway, Zscaler DNS Security
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: DNSFilter; alternatives Cloudflare Gateway, Control D
- Perplexity Sonar: Cloudflare Gateway, DNSFilter; alternatives Control D, SafeDNS
- Grok 4.1 Fast: DNSFilter; alternatives Cisco Umbrella, Cloudflare Gateway
- Mistral Small: DNSFilter
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: DNSFilter; alternatives Cisco Umbrella, Cloudflare Gateway, Webroot DNS Protection
- Llama 4 Maverick: DNSFilter, WebTitan
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: Cloudflare Gateway; alternatives Cisco Umbrella, DNSFilter
- Kimi K2: DNSFilter; alternatives Cisco Umbrella, Cloudflare Gateway
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: DNSFilter; alternatives Cisco Umbrella, Cloudflare Gateway, Infoblox BloxOne DDI
- MiniMax M2.5: Cloudflare Gateway, DNSFilter; alternatives Cisco Umbrella
- GPT-6 Luna: DNSFilter; alternatives Cisco Secure Access, Cloudflare Gateway
- Muse Glimmer 30B: DNSFilter; alternatives Cisco Umbrella, Cloudflare Gateway

## Sources the answers cite

77 of 84 answers came back with a source list, from 14 of 14 models. Sites named in the most answers:

- cybersecuritynews.com: 45 answers, 75 citations
- controld.com: 42 answers, 84 citations
- cyberpress.org: 31 answers, 40 citations
- aimultiple.com: 31 answers, 31 citations
- dnsfilter.com: 29 answers, 44 citations
- thectoclub.com: 28 answers, 28 citations
- expertinsights.com: 25 answers, 28 citations
- sourceforge.net: 22 answers, 28 citations

Pages named in the most answers:

- https://aimultiple.com/dns-security (31 answers)
- https://thectoclub.com/tools/best-dns-security-software (28 answers)
- https://cybersecuritynews.com/best-dns-security-solutions (25 answers)
- https://cybersecuritynews.com/bst-protective-dns-services (22 answers)
- https://expertinsights.com/web-security/the-top-dns-web-filtering-platforms-for-businesses (22 answers)
- https://cyberpress.org/best-dns-filtering-solutions (20 answers)
- https://controld.com/blog/dns-filtering-services (17 answers)
- https://devopsschool.com/blog/top-10-dns-filtering-platforms-features-pros-cons-comparison (16 answers)
- https://geekflare.com/cybersecurity/best-dns-filtering-software (16 answers)
- https://cybersecuritynews.com/best-dns-filtering-solutions-2026 (14 answers)

## Warned against

- Cisco Umbrella: 10 of 40 labels negative. "its pricing and complexity can be prohibitive for small businesses, and setup can be steep... can be overkill or frustrating for smaller deployments" (Qwen 3.7 Flash, negative prompt)
- Google Public DNS: 6 of 6 labels negative. "Problematic Providers to Avoid ... Google's DNS and OpenDNS employ tracking for their specific needs" (Claude Haiku 4.5, negative prompt)
- OpenDNS: 4 of 16 labels negative. "Services to avoid or approach with high caution:
- OpenDNS (Cisco):
  - Logs DNS queries... Performs NXDOMAIN hijacking" (Grok 4.1 Fast, negative prompt)
- NextDNS: 4 of 27 labels negative. "NextDNS/AdGuard: Highly customizable (ads/trackers/parental), but free tiers have query limits" (Grok 4.1 Fast, negative prompt)

## Record

- Method: https://it-ai-index.com/methodology/
- Raw judge labels and full responses: https://it-ai-index.com/data/
- License: CC BY 4.0. Cite as IT AI Recommendation Index, October 2026 Edition, it-ai-index.com.